"The Black Imprint of Sandals in White Mosaic Floors": H.D.'s Mythomystical Poetics

My dissertation examines the traces of inverse (mytho)mysticism, more synchronous with mythical alchemy than transcendent mystery, in H.D.’s mature work (1946-1961). Whereas H.D.’s earliest works respond to a fin de siècle occultism and a collective psyche troubled by the eschatological distress that, as Susan Acheson writes, “was widespread amongst modernist writers grappling with …world events and with the implications of Nietzsche’s inaugural annunciation of modernity in terms of the death of God” (187), her later oeuvre is dedicated to the same work of soul undertaken by the “secret cult of Night” in Vale Ave. Here, her thematic scope faces two ways: backward to ancient Greek mystery cults and their palingenesic rites and forward to depth psychologists searching for the Soul of the World. Vale Ave plays a pronounced role in my study as symbolic guide; in its seventy-four sequences the layering of time in the “trilogy” of past, present, and future that H.D. had explored during the years of the Second World War in order to get behind the fallen walls of cause and effect collapses into two distinct phases of human origin—“meeting” (evolution) and “parting” (involution)—and the poem invites Lilith and Lucifer to be its archetypal guides. My method for the study is imaginal, entering such disciplines as history, philosophy, and theology and bringing psychological understanding to them. John Walsh’s introduction to Vale Ave notes H.D.’s theme “that the human psyche exists in a dimension outside of time and space as well as within them. In Vale Ave, H.D. presents the extremity of this dual-dimensionality: metempsychosis” (vii). However, the concept that H.D. investigates is more than a literary processus of characters who adopt different masks and appear at various junctures in a chronological unwinding of history. I explore H.D.'s works as part of a Modernist tradition of writing “books of the dead” designed not to guide the soul after death, but to draw the gaze upon “a nearer thing,” as H.D. writes in Erige Cor Tuum Ad Me In Caelum, the wisdom intrinsic in the spirit of life itself.

Cities of God? Medieval urban forms and their Christian Symbolism

Situated in the context of recent geographical engagements with 'landscape', this paper combines 'morphological' and 'iconographic' landscape interpretations to examine how urban forms were perceived in late medieval Europe. To date, morphological studies have mapped the medieval city either by classifying urban layouts according to particular types, or by analysing plan forms of particular towns and cities to reveal their spatial evolution. This paper outlines a third way, an 'iconographic' approach, which shows how urban forms in the Middle Ages conveyed Christian symbolism. Three such 'mappings' explore this thesis: the first uses textual and visual representations which show that the city was understood as a scaled-down world â?? a microcosm â?? linking city and cosmos in the medieval mind; the second 'mapping' develops this theme further and suggests that urban landscapes were inscribed with symbolic form through their layout on the ground; while the third looks at how Christian symbolism of urban forms was performed through the urban landscape in perennial religious processions. Each of these 'mappings' points to the symbolic, mystical significance urban form had in the Middle Ages, based on religious faith, and they thus offer a deepened appreciation of how urban landscapes were represented, constructed and experienced at the time.

Greek-Turkish Dilemmas and the Cyprus-EU Accession Process

This article compares the processes of foreign policymaking in Greece and Turkey in order to examine why the incentives and pressures of the enlargement process have failed until now to initiate a settlement in the Cyprus bicommunal negotiations. While most studies on the Cyprus problem have focused on the two communities of the island, little at-tention has been paid to the policies of the two â??motherlandsâ??, namely Greece and Turkey. Yet their leverage on the two Cypriot communities and their conflicting expectations with regard to an enlarged Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean constitute a complex security puzzle. The Republic of Cyprus stands as a champion candidate member for the next enlargement, amid fears of Turkish reprisals and hopes for a po-litical settlement on the island. With the benefits of settlement overwhelming the benefits of any other alternative, it is paradoxical that the parties seem to be about to fail to reach a last-minute, mutually beneficial compromise. I try to resolve this paradox by supplementing rational choice theory with cognitivist theories of international relations. While rational choice predicts a direct relationship between external environment and foreign policy shifts, the case of Cyprus suggests that this relationship is actually indirect. Without understanding how the external environment is framed in the domestic political discourse of Greece and Turkey, it is impossible to demonstrate how outside pressure and incentives affect foreign policy shifts.